


Blessings

by TheAntleredPolarBear



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childbirth, F/M, Pregnancy, so avoid if squeamish, some mentions of blood and various other liquids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 02:46:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9414581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAntleredPolarBear/pseuds/TheAntleredPolarBear
Summary: The story of how Satine Kryze's Jedi came back to her, and to their child.This is a gift for my dear friend Lily, coghiveseven on tumblr. (She doesn't have an AO3 account).





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is very much imperfect (read: godawful) but I'm really tired of looking at it in my WIPs folder, so I'll post what I have now. The idea of Korkie being the secret Obitine lovechild has always made me feel some kind of way, and this is my attempt to take the theory more seriously.

Satine didn’t know exactly when it had happened. Goddess knows how many times she and her Jedi protector had fallen into bed together, seeking any form of comfort they had, each time swearing to each other that this was the last. She’d given little thought to contraception, believing that the sheer stress of her situation would be enough to render pregnancy impossible. But, as usual, luck had not been on her side. A visit to a physician had seen her concerns realised in frightening clarity. One rogue seed had found fertile ground, and Satine Kryze, Duchess of Mandalore, was with child.

She and her family quickly formulated a plan. It was all to be kept secret; not even Bo-Katan knew of her older sister’s predicament. Satine’s role was laid out before her. Ophelia, the eldest Kryze sister, would take the child and raise them as her own. They would bear the clan name. Satine would be a loving aunt to him, and she would be the duchess that she needed to be. There was no room for controversy in the personal life of a ruler already opposed by so many. This was the best thing for their family, and for Mandalore itself.

She had, at one point, been content with the arrangement. She couldn’t be a parent, not now. Children on Mandalore were born or taken into loving homes, with a parent or parents that had prepared for them, planned a life around them. They weren’t conceived in the heat of panic, lust and youthful infatuation, to a pair of fugitives who would be pulled apart if their lives regained enough stability to nurture a child. Ophelia’s life was safe and stable. She could care for a baby far better than Satine could.

Then, one night, she’d awoken bleary-eyed to feel the child move inside her, and her whole world seemed to move with them. She’d placed a hand on her belly, bending her fingers to fit the outward curve, and traced the soft movements with her fingers. Questions had swarmed her mind, questions she didn’t even know she’d had before, but seemed familiar all the same. She’d blocked them out, perhaps to avoid becoming attached, but now they flowed freely into consciousness. What would the child look like? Would they have her eyes, her nose, her hair, her lips? Or would they be the spitting image of their father, and undo their ruse at the seams? She hadn’t asked about the child’s sex, but at that moment, she wondered about that too. She’d mused on every variable that came to mind, all while the baby’s gentle movements pressed against her palm.

She’d wanted to contact Obi-Wan, and ask his advice. Would the child know the Force as his father did? He would know how to care for a child like that, surely. Maybe they could mend her planet together, or else run away to raise a family in anonymity and peace. Forget about duty, codes and conduct, and just _be_. But…he’d been dedicated to the Jedi Order since childhood. How could she be so selfish as to ruin the only life he’d ever known? No, she’d have to do it herself. She could run to the country and raise her baby alone. Though it would be hard, she knew she could find a way to make a living; she may not know much about working the land, but she was clever, and willing to learn.

Of course, it mattered little what she wanted. She’d dream of a life with her child every so often, but by morning, those fantasies always died. Reality and practicality would have to govern every decision. She couldn’t justify calling Obi-Wan to her conscience, and she could not run from her responsibility, her _promise_ , to Mandalore. Ophelia was the best person to care for her child, and she would be able to ask advice on the child’s potential for Force-sensitivity. As much as it would break her heart, she would have to let them go.

* * *

Satine had been right to worry about the Force. It was something she and Ophelia had discussed at length. The visions, however, they hadn’t anticipated. They only came when she slept, and were easily written off as strange dreams. Glimpses of clashing lightsaber blades and strange swirls of atmosphere. The smell of burning ozone and tea leaves and sweat. It was almost calming, the closest thing she’d have to seeing Obi-Wan again. That was until the dream.

Everything seemed to come to her in shades of red at first. Two blurred figures dancing in the crimson. Muffled buzzing of electronics.

And then the scene snapped into total clarity.

Qui-Gon was alone, locked in a duel with some stranger far younger and faster than him. Through the strange red haze, she could barely make out his features, but she saw horns, and robes of jet black. Twin blades sliced the air. There was some kind of savage beauty to it: the fluid movements of the fighters, the bursts of blinding light renting the air. Qui-Gon blocked the stranger every time, but even Satine in her inexperience could tell he was struggling to keep up. There was a lightsaber clutched in her own hand, she could feel the cool metal in her palm, but somehow she didn’t move. Perhaps she couldn’t.

The stranger’s movements were almost too fast to track. He struck Qui-Gon hard in the face, turned on his heel, and ran him through.

A scream tore out of her throat. She’d never known such fear. Qui-Gon dropped heavily to his knees, and then onto his side. Her invincible protector, helpless in his agony. No, not just her protector, her _friend_. A man who had saved her more times than she could count. And this stranger had the _gall_ to wound him? She turned her gaze to them, this monster. She would kill him. She barely noticed the absurdity of the thought. She knew she would kill him. Either that, or she would die trying.

But then the stranger faced her.

She didn’t know when those horrible burning eyes became the lights above her bed, or when the red haze of a shield became the sheer fabric of her bed curtains, but she knew well enough her screams at least had followed her from the nightmare. She struggled against her imaginary foe until the bed seemed to slip from underneath her and she hit the floor.

She reached for the comlink without thought, pure instinct driving her fingers to punch in Obi-Wan’s name.

“Satine?” Obi-Wan’s voice was a torch in the fog, a hand in the darkness. A sob and a moan broke from her throat.

“Obi-Wan!” Hers was thick with terror. She was vaguely aware of some liquid pooling on the floor between her legs, but all other thoughts were driven from her mind by pure, desperate fear. “Is Master Qui-Gon with you?”

“Satine, what…”

“ _Is he with you?_ ”

“I-yes. What’s wrong? Are you in danger?” Satine let out a great breath of relief. There was still time. Time to help him.

“Obi-Wan, listen, please listen. You and Qui-Gon, you’re both in terrible danger. There’s a man…a Zabrak I think…Maker, his _eyes_ …he’s going to kill Qui-Gon!”

“Wait, Satine, how do you know this?”

“I _saw_ it!” she pleaded, her sobs now full of frustration more than anything else. “Please, Obi-Wan, you have to listen to me!”

“I believe you, Satine, I do. But I don’t understand how you could possibly…”

“I…” Her breath stuck in her throat. She had no explanation for him, and even if she had, the idea of lying to him in so flagrantly made her feel sick. She tried, several stuttering times, but no words came. The truth would have to come out. “I’m pregnant.”

There was silence on the line. Seconds stretched into several full minutes before it was broken. “It is yours,” she added. “I couldn’t…not so soon after you left. I...”

“I’m on my way, Satine. Hold tight, I’m on my way.”

* * *

 

The doctors said that the stress of the vision and the fall from her bed were likely what caused her waters to break. For everyone’s peace of mind, and the safety of the baby, they decided to induce labour. The first contraction started mid-morning: an uncomfortable, but not yet painful, clenching of abdominal muscle. Obi-Wan arrived soon after that. He held her tight as if he’d never been gone. He smelled just as she remembered, tea leaves and burning ozone. She could have spent hours in his embrace that day.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” he asked, eventually. Satine had been dreading the question.

“I wanted to. How could I, Obi-Wan? The Jedi Order is all you’ve ever known! To tell you would have been to rip you away from your life. How could I do that to someone I…someone I love?”

Obi-Wan took her hands, and met her gaze. “Oh, Satine.” He must have thought her so foolish. She thought herself foolish as well, but she didn’t need the condescension. But he surprised her with his next words. “Thank you. But your child… _our_ child…is infinitely more important to me than the Jedi. I never imagined anything could be, but…” He closed the gap between them, forehead resting on her own, and a soft hand caressing her cheek. “If you had asked, I would never have left you at all.”

Nobody asked if they were still going ahead with their ruse. They didn’t need to.

Obi-Wan slept beside her, with one hand on her swollen belly. There was warmth and love implicit in his touch. She was hyperaware of every point of contact between them. She wondered if the child recognised their father’s hand pressed against the outside wall of their sanctuary.

She had a few hours’ sleep before the contractions became painful enough to wake her. Obi-Wan let her grip his hand tight as a vice as her abdomen pulled in on itself, clenched up like a balled fist. The pain was intense, all-consuming, but the medication made her sick, and she declined it. His soft words of encouragement, or predictions of gender and appearance, kept her amused for a while. In the ever-shortening moments of pause between the pains, he would massage her back, or stay close to her side as she walked round the room. He refused to leave her side.

The effectiveness of his comforts decreased as time went on. The thought that sustained her, kept her from losing herself in the crushing pressure, was that soon it would be over. Soon she would have the child she’d wanted and loved for so many months. The pains continued, closer together, each more intense than the last. Thankfully, she managed to return to bed before she was rendered immobile. Her vision blurred with tears and agony. Whispered words of love were lost amid the sounds of her pulse in her ears. But her concentration didn’t waver. She faced so many seemingly insurmountable challenges, but she had come through worse.

And then, at last, there he was.

The last hours of pain seemed like nothing but a footnote then. A mandatory epilogue to a story spanning the months that came before. The scans and blood tests and anxious medcenter waits, every night spent wide awake when she was too anxious or uncomfortable to sleep, it all seemed so distant. All of it had been absorbed into her being and condensed into the tiny little thing that lay before her: wet and red and writhing upon the soiled bed sheets, harsh cries shuddering out of his tiny mouth.

One of the nurses lifted him and unceremoniously plopped him down on the bare skin of her sternum, before draping a towel over them both. Something about needing Satine’s body heat to be warm. She ran her thumbs over the half-moons of his fingernails, let him rest a tiny palm against her own, breathed in the scent of his flawless skin until it was embedded in her memory. He squirmed at the sensation of her tears on his face.

“I’m sorry. My child, my Corentin.” The name fell off her tongue so easily, she knew it was right. “I’m so sorry. I’ll never let you go. _Never_.”


End file.
